“Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea,” a new exhibit on display at the Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center for the Arts, features nearly 50 original photographs, drawings, paintings, installations and video works by this critically acclaimed contemporary artist.

“His work explores the creative potential of digital manipulation with incredible finesse and finish,” said Telfair Curator of Art Courtney McNeil. “It’s rare to come across work that is so fresh and unique.”

Regardless of the medium, narrative always serves as a driving force in “Alter Ego.”

In his earlier work, this 40-year-old artist uses Photoshop to stage elaborate scenarios populated by various incarnations of himself — donning wigs and bathing suits, yellow rain slickers or prep school uniforms.

He inserts himself, in 12 different poses, into a remarkably lifelike boarding school class photo and multiplies his image, dozens of times over, to create the illusion of a menacing “Lord of the Flies” tribe of stick-wielding boys.

“Alter Ego” maps Goicolea’s evolution as a more mature artist in haunting, often desolate composite landscapes and intimate, psychological mixed media works on Mylar. The artist recently spoke with the Savannah Morning News about manipulation, ambiguity and the plasticity of reality.

How did your interest in digitally manipulating photographs first come about?

It was a weird, natural evolution. I was doing these self-portraits and building these sets, and I wanted to incorporate other people, but I didn’t really want them bringing their own ideas to the project, so I did a couple of different versions of things. At the time, I was working at an advertising agency and taught myself basic Photoshop techniques. I decided to use Photoshop to create situations where I could be multiple people in the same photo. It just evolved from there.

How has your process changed over the years?

It has evolved as I’ve stopped photographing myself and starting photographing other people and landscapes and elements of different places and putting them all together. Now I’m at the point where I’m creating something from nothing. I used to stage the photographs and position people within them. Now there’s not a lot of constructing. It’s a fun challenge to make this world that doesn’t exist.

You treat the landscape in a narrative way, infusing it with mystery, emotion and ambiguity. What appeals to you about the landscape and makes this subject matter endlessly fascinating?

I’ve always been interested in the idea of narrative and like the idea of conveying the notion of narrative and some sort of action that has taken place in a landscape without actual figures there. The landscape records this leftover passage of time and human interaction. I remember being young and being fascinated by snow globes and paper pop-up books. I was fascinated by how people are able to miniaturize and translate a space in a different way. It’s a way to reinterpret space into a different language.

You work in so many different media, from photography and video to drawing and painting. Do you have a favorite or do you enjoy experimenting?

I like to mix it up. If I work too much in one medium, then I use the other to break it up. If I work too much in photography or video, I start to crave the immediacy of mark making and something more tactile.

What kind of a reaction do you hope people will have to this show at the Telfair?

I hope people can insert themselves into the work and see something different. I never like it when work is too straightforward or overly didactic. I’ve always felt like I try to create these narratives that are somewhat open-ended or ambiguous. I hope people can identify with it.

Why are you so drawn to ambiguity in your work?

I like these in-between, transitional states. I like when you can look at something and you’re not sure if it’s playful or violent. I remember when I was younger, watching dogs playing, and it was almost terrifying, but at the same time it seemed fun and wild and ruckus. It’s that kind of feeling that I want to communicate – that uncertainty about how to interpret something. Those unanswered moments lend themselves to a narrative state.

Your work seems deeply invested in exploring the plasticity of reality. Is that fun for you as an artist?

It is fun. I like taking iconographic elements form mythology, art history and fairy tales — things that resonate in our culture — and taking them out of context to create these worlds that seem dreamlike and fantastical, but the building blocks are things we know within the realm of reality. It has a basis in reality, but it falls into a realm of uncertainty. It does feel a bit fantastical, but not over the top. It’s still rooted in something that could possibly happen. I like playing with that.

Admission: Free to Telfair members; $20 for adults; $18 for AAA and seniors; free for children under 5

Information: 790-8800 or www.telfair.org

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Atlanta in 1971, Anthony Goicolea is a first-generation Cuban-American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. Best known for his powerful and often unsettling photographs, Goicolea’s work is included in permanent collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Telfair Museums. His art has been featured in Art in America, ARTnews, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Goicolea has bachelor’s degrees from the University of Georgia in art history and in drawing and painting and a master’s degree in sculpture from the Pratt Institute of Art.